Description

The Dead Sea Scrolls, in the narrow sense identical with the Qumran Caves Scrolls, are a set of ancient Jewish manuscripts from the Second Temple period. They were discovered over a period of ten years, between 1946 and 1956, at the Qumran Caves near Ein Feshkha in the West Bank, on the northern shore of the Dead Sea. Dating from the 3rd century BCE to the 1st century CE, the Dead Sea Scrolls include the oldest surviving manuscripts of entire books later included in the biblical canons, including deuterocanonical manuscripts from late Second Temple Judaism and extrabiblical books. At the same time, they cast new light on the emergence of Christianity and of Rabbinic Judaism. In the wider sense, the Dead Sea Scrolls also include similar findings from elsewhere in the Judaean Desert, of which some are from later centuries. Almost all of the 15,000 scrolls and scroll fragments are held in the Shrine of the Book at the Israel Museum located in Jerusalem.